In Keyholes

by Cynthia Atkins June 28, 2013 by Cynthia Atkins |June 28, 2013

There is an apothecary of neighbors, who live next door with a fury of tinctures and wisecracks. Everybody wants a turn, a chance to throw insults like stones into the pool. Talk behind our backs,Can do that blindfolded, one arm tied behind. The shovel-ready sunlight is falling all over window sills, dusty underneath, piled with last year’s holiday cards, never mailed. It curves on the furniture, conversations peeling-off in layers. Pearls and high-heels weigh more than their ideals— In backyards, there are noises, jump-rope and dryers will make it soft and nice. Rumpled little girls getting cornered—The homework got left in a puddle by the bad boy (now older, now drunk!). Blackbirds on telephone wires. New nieces and nephews, protecting the secrets of infirm marriages, money woes to broken kitchen tables, by what gets said that can’t be put back in the bottle. In the very end, our bodies become a whispering of doctor’s instruments—Privacy is the fever that will loom at half-mast, tomorrow. All the houses congregating to open up a gateway to our anguish—Earmarked for the landfill of last week’s trash. Our interiors deposited and undisclosed. With our backs turned, this flashy society of genes and germs, will relish to expose.

Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and the forthcoming collection In The Event of Full Disclosure. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, American Letters & Commentary, BOMB, Del Sol Review, Florida Review, Harpur Palate, The Journal, North American Review, Seneca Review, Tampa Review, Valparaiso Review, and Verse Daily, among others. Atkins is a former assistant director for the Poetry Society of America and is currently an assistant professor of English at Virginia Western Community College. She was founder and artistic director of Writers@Jordan House/FAIR, which held reading series and workshops. She will be launching In The Event of Full Disclosure at the Sacramento Poetry Center on July 22, 2013. More info on upcoming readings and events: www.cynthiaatkins.com.